(Hello again, and welcome back to Freezing Hearts! Yes, this is a thing now, enjoy! As before I have a recommendation! This time, I’m going to bring up “Ryn of Avonside”, by the lovely and talented QuietValerie, right here on Scribblehub! I won’t talk about it, since its best read from a bnk ste, but it’s got a very creative and unique take on magic, so if you’re a magic nerd, I highly recommend that you give it a read!)

  As Kaho looks from the small pink card to me, and back again, her eyes widen. “Ohhh, that must be why you were so down in the dumps! You were worried you weren’t going to find a Pandora, weren’t you?”

  I mentally shrug, and then nod with a small smile. I’d rather not get into all the details now.

  “I guess that’s one way of looking at it. I do feel better now, so there’s that. Anyway, I think I’m going to accept the invite. I don’t have any reason to refuse, and I get the feeling this happened for a purpose, y’know?”

  The first-year Pandora nods. “Congratutions, you must be so excited! It’s only been a week or so, and you already have yourself a room invite!” she smiles, handing me the card back. I tuck it into my bzer pocket, accompanying Kaho to our next lesson. The clock drags, and I barely pay attention. The prospect of disappointing Chihaya is strong, but more than that, the prospect of backing out due to my own insecurity is worse. I WILL go through with this. I WILL become a Limiter. I WILL-

  The bell rings, and I jolt, tugging my bck card from the terminal in front of me, and standing up. For my next lesson, there’s a free-study period, so I head to the library, grabbing a book at random and parking myself in a corner to read. A few other students come and go, but I pay them no mind, my mind drifting back to lunch, and the meeting with Chihaya.

  The librarian eventually comes round to usher any students out, including myself, as the final bell rings, signalling the end of csses and a return to the dorms, or to those in one, the beginning of club activities. I traipse back to my room, passing Kazuya on the way. He’s with Kaho and Arthur, and the two seem desperate to talk him out of doing something dumb again.

  Never mind that now, I have other matters to attend to. I hurry up to my room and get a fresh set of clothes out, ducking into my ensuite bathroom for a shower. A take a little longer than I normally would, wanting to make a good impression, before dressing in my neatly-pressed uniform, making sure to transfer the card Chihaya had given me to my new bzer, pcing my worn set in the undry hamper for the housekeeping staff.

  Emerging into the early evening light, I check the nearest campus map, using the information I’d gotten from the card to locate my destination, turning and jogging along the street and turning left at the end, my heart beating faster than it has in a long time. Soon… Soon, I’ll be an official Limiter…

  The campus is huge, with separate dorms for each year’s Pandora and Limiter students, which means it takes almost half-an-hour of jogging just to get to the second-year’s accommodations. There’s a group of three Pandoras hanging out at the entrance of one of the buildings, but it’s not the one I need to go to, so I ignore it, turning my attention to the nearest of the half-dozen structures. Pushing the main door open and scanning my ID, I follow the numbers on the card, making my way to the first floor and along a couple of corridors. There’s a door at the far end of the third hall, with the matching number to the one on Chihaya’s invite. I take a deep breath, and head for the door, raising a hand to knock.

  A few seconds of chaotic-sounding noise ter, and the door flies open, Rengoku Chihaya standing there in a cy, frilly, figure-hugging… thing, a wide smile on her face as I turn pink.

  “Oh, Akira! I wasn’t expecting you to make your decision so quickly, I’m so happy!” she pulls me in as I try to not look too much at her. Her room is really nice, actually, with personal touches here and there, such as the rge stuffed shark plush on the bed.

  There’s a bottle of red wine on a table, two chairs set out at it, with two gsses glinting in the mplight, and Chihaya saunters her way over to it, uncorking the bottle right in front of me, taking a seat.

  Joining her at the table, I sit, as the dark ruby wine flows from bottle to gss. Chihaya turns on a music system with a wave of her finger, mellow sounds pying to heighten the atmosphere, as she slides one of the gsses toward me, her short, ginger hair bobbing softly.

  Taking the proffered drink, I sip at it, rexing a little. I know that the Baptism hasn’t begun yet; this is just a prelude to it, but… Chihaya smiles. She seems way less bothered about being in her lingerie than I am about seeing her in it. She… does look good, though…

  Eventually, Chihaya pces her empty winegss down. “Are you ready? I have a first-aid kit here, too, so don’t worry. It won’t hurt much, so, please put your trust in me.”

  She smiles, and pces a small knife on the table, alongside a medical case with bandages and adhesive strips.

  “Alright. Now, I need you to take off your bzer and shirt. Don’t worry; I’ll walk you through the process as we go through it together, okay?” Chihaya murmurs, picking up the knife and slipping the strap of her babydoll down off her left shoulder.

  I avert my eyes, sipping shakily from my half-empty gss of wine, as she raises the sharp little bde, carefully digging it into her back next to one of the tiny, hexagonal Stigmata impnted in her back, near her spine. A few moments of prying, and she arches her back, reaching back with her other hand and tugging the loosened Stigmata free of her flesh, the self-impnting cables retracting into the base of the small, powerful artefact.

  She pces it down, then the knife, tugging open a pack of disinfectant wipes, cleaning both thoroughly with the soft cloth, leaving them gleaming and dry.

  As she pces a pad of disinfectant-ced gauze over her small wound and fixes it in pce with adhesive, I carefully remove my uniform top, leaving me in only my trousers and socks. Chihaya stands, and moves behind me, her hand gentle on my back. “You have a very nice back, Akira. Slim and toned, perfect for the Baptism… now, which side would you like your new Stigmata impnted?”

  “Um… My right side, please.” I swallow, and then a brief fsh of pain sears across my right shoulder. Chihaya gently dabs at the wound she’d made, before picking up the Stigmata she’d just removed from her own back.

  She pushes it gently into my back, and I can feel the impntation cables deploying. Then… everything goes bck…

  The next thing I know, I’m lying on my back, in a softly-lit room. Somehow, the doctor, Elise Schmitz, is leaning over me. “Ah, you’re awake. Welcome back, first-year. How do you feel?”

  I blink a few times, trying to move, before hissing in pain.

  “I feel like I got run over by a Nova in a combine harvester…”

  She chuckles, making a note on a digital tablet. “Well, we… have some good news, and some… unexpected news. The good news is, your Stigmata has been impnted successfully. The unexpected news is that, well… you went a little berserk during your genetic shift.”

  I furrow my brow. “Genetic shift?”

  She sighs, rubbing her eyes behind her gsses. “Look. I’m going to be honest, we have no idea what this means, but your genetic makeup has been altered. You’re not the same… person… you were a few hours ago. You’ve been unconscious for almost the whole night.”

  I turn my head a little, and a slim hand grabs my wrist.

  “You’re awake!” It’s Chihaya. She’s holding a bottle of soda, still in nothing but her lingerie, her face almost glowing, as she squeezes my hand.

  “You’re amazing, you know that?! I thought you had potential, but this exceeds everything I ever imagined!”

  I slowly sit up, trying to parse the ginger-haired Pandora’s words, having slight trouble breathing. When I reach down to rub my chest, I…

  “Huh?”

  I look down, feeling something warm attached to me. Two somethings, in fact. I’m not half-dressed anymore; I’m wearing a loose hospital-grade gown. Tugging the neck open a little, I peek down my front.

  “Adgfbsjkfijusduifoii!!!!!!!”

  There, a permanent part of me, sitting high on my chest, are… “I have BOOBS?!”

  Dr. Schmitz nods. “Indeed you do. It seems that, while you could sync with Limiter-grade Stigmata to a degree, once a mature Stigmata was impnted into you during your Baptism, your body reacted with it on a molecur level, reshaping your entire body. You’re… you’re not just a Limiter. You’re a Pandora, too.”

  I stare up at her, then swivel my aching head to Chihaya, who nods.

  “Yeah, I saw it all! Once my Stigmata took, you started screaming, and then you went nuts! You started moving like you were possessed, deployed a volt weapon, and started hacking my room to pieces! Luckily, one of the other Pandoras on my floor managed to get her Limiter over in time to deploy a Freezing area. It stopped you for almost a minute before you kinda produced a very localized Freezing around yourself, before passing out completely.”

  I stare, and then flop limply back on the pillows. “Does… that mean… we aren’t partners?” I say quietly, closing my eyes.

  Chihaya giggles, and adds, “Activate Ereinbar set!”

  I spasm as a wealth of new information floods my brain, sensations flowing between my body and Chihaya’s. She ends the connection, and I sag back. “Holy shit… we’re still connected by the Ereinbar?!”

  She giggles, and I shiver slightly, feeling the bedsheets shifting over my changed body. The doctor smiles. “Now, we have a possible solution to the issues we now find ourselves facing. While you could technically keep your original room due to being able to act as a Limiter, we’d recommend you move to the girls’ dorms instead. Now, we have spaces in the first-year Pandora dormitories, but Ms Rengoku has proposed that you share a room together. And, as unusual as the situation is, I feel inclined to recommend that option.”

  I sigh, before nodding. “I… I don’t know how to be a girl, so… Chihaya, will you teach me? Please?”

  She lets out a squeal, and nods, her fme-coloured hair swishing. “Of course! Although, we might have to rename you, at least your personal name… hmm… Oh! How about Akari? It’s close enough to your old name, while still being different enough to be ‘you’!”

  I splutter a little, feeling my face turn pink. My mom always did say that she’d have chosen that name for me, if I’d been born a… “That… sounds really good, actually…”

  Dr. Elise smiles and makes another note on her tablet. “Alright, let’s amend your documentation… “Shimizu Akari, female… Pandora/Limiter hybrid… Okay, that’s all adjusted. Now, I’d like you to come back in a couple of days, a week or so, to have a check-up, but we’ll keep you both off school for a bit so Akari can get used to her new situation. Thank you for your help with this, Ms Rengoku. Now, the pair of you may leave, but, you should both deploy your volt textures first. We can’t have you walking all the way back to your dorms in your underwear, can we?”

  She bustles away to check on another patient. Chihaya helps me out of bed, and coaches me in volt textures. It’s easy enough, thankfully, and the pair of us command, “Volt texture, equip!”

  Matching female uniforms take shape around our bodies. They feel as real as my old clothes did, with the same tensile strength and weight as clothing. Even shoes and… underwear…. Brushing my hands down my short skirt and across my top, I adjust the bow that girls wear instead of a tie, and smile. This…. Is exactly right. Not precisely the way I’d wanted to be myself, but… better. If I do well, I might be allowed to keep this Stigmata. After tonight, I don’t think I WANT to go back…

  As Chihaya and I leave the room, I look over at the other occupied bed. It’s Kazuya! By his side is Satellizer and a girl in strange clothing at his bedside. They don’t seem to notice us, and I slip behind Chihaya in order to draw less attention should they notice me. Luckily, they’re more focussed on him, and he’s out cold. My secret is safe, for now…